SirSnookalot

I'm going with experience at the QB position.

WRB is on the money. I don't see the need to weigh, measure or even photgraph everything caught, unless it's in competition or a PB is important to you. I probably haven't weighed a bass in 5 years, a ballpark guess is good enough for me. Tuckahoe Joe has a good idea with a shopping bag, or often times the hook elongates the hole in the fishes lip, not a bad place to weigh it from.

I fish some tidal canals, I don't target bass but have caught some there. When fishing tides it's good to know what to target on high, low or tide change. In other words, you have to know the characteristics of your target species, you can waste a lot time being there at the wrong time. When fishing tidal you may have a small window of opportunity.

I'm not much for technique specific (except for butterfly jigging), but fishing many different types of conditions as I do I have rod preferences. In windy conditions I like 7' rods, med or mh lure wt 1 oz max if I'm fishing at waters level. Fishing in wind from an elevated position like a jettie it's a 7' rod max lure wt of 2-3 oz, I need the lure to work not flop on top of the water and heavier lure is my ticket. In calmer conditions it's 7'6 or 8' with the same lure wts as previously described. I also have different set ups for different species. All told about 15 inshore outfits, all spinning and could easily whittle that arsenal down, but I like stuff. I have another 5 offshore set ups, separate ones for private and public boats. 5 freshwater set ups, 1 gets used about 90% of the time and 1 set up strictly for snakeheads. The irony is that I don't use a lot of different lures and use many of the same ones are used on each set up. I got way too much stuff, but getting ready to buy an outfit I fell in love with.........lol.

Try doubling a penny every day for a month......bet ya can't do it. I don't advocate smoking but if you do there are better deals out there than at your local drug store. I pay $25 a carton of non FSC cigarettes.

I was down in Coral Springs yesterday (not the first time), those canals are disgusting down there. It's an ok diversion once in a while but I can't make a practice of fishing in those areas, just too dirty.

I check the wind direction first, if it's westerly I'm wearing fishing pants and and long sleeves for insect protection, easterly usually shorts long sleeve or short sleeve t shirt. I agree about some of the fishing shirts, they are quite warm, buffs too, mostly cotton wear for me. I always have rain gear, sweatshirt, t shirt in the car in case the forecast is inaccurate.

Some great looking fish posted. We don't have smallmouth here, was fishing for kingfish, an hour or so later pulled this one in, reef shark

Naw, there's no fun in fishing in Florida .

You just have to experiment to find what works best for you on the water that you fish. These posts are good starting point.

No denying about a hot bite. Being in Florida this time of year it's really about bass and it isn't really too hard, other times of the year it's much more challenging. The reverse is true for other species, I catch more bass in a couple of hours than I've caught fish at the beach, 4 snook and 1 barracuda in the last 3 weeks. Summer time snook everywhere and can't catch a bass to save my life.

Kind of reminds me when I had the scrap yard. The building was equipped with alarms, as an older inner city building it was tape on the windows. We'd have people coming in at night and taking the bricks out and walking right into the building without tripping the alarm........lol. Luckily the street people didn't know what was valuable and what wasn't, we put the crap within easy access, they want in, you can't stop them.

I won't say i have a favorite as I've only used them the last 2 days. Of the 3 I bought I prefferd the Yum crawdad as it was more durable and stayed on the jig significantly better. Over the last 2 days about 20 fish were caught, changing brands quite often I found catchability to be identical.

My winter isn't like your winter. As I've mentioned before I'm not a bass jig & trailer fisherman, but I've been using them the last 2 days. Yesterday was ok 4-5 in about 75 minutes, not great but ok. Today I struggled for close to an hour with about 3 fish, then it dawned on me.....a fish is a fish and how is it different than a snook, I started to swim my jigs with a wavering motion like I do for snook. It took a few minutes to get comfortable with my cadence, then I was on fire, didn't count but there could have been 12 -15 fish landed over the next 45 minutes quite a few 4-5 #. All this in a 1/4 mile stretch of a canal on foot.

Majority of home burglaries happen in daylight hours when kids are in school and the adults are at work. An alarm system may be the best deterrent.

I'm not a jig and trailer kind of guy, but I gave it a good test yesterday. I bought one of Big O's Rage baits, in all honesty it was easy fishing, never waiting long for a strike. Not only did I catch quite a few bass, but caught a mayan and had my line broken from what I think was a gar. Put senkos on after I lost my jig and the bite continued to be good, maybe I hit a good day, but I still prefer a faster pace to my fishing even if I catch less fish.

Magic eraser works well. Denatured alcohol works too, but the negative it makes some of the nooks and crannies of the cork a bit darker.

I use 15# braid on my spinning gear with a 20# p-line floroclear leader. I need a bit heavier leader to hoist fish out of my high banked canals, after much experimenting over the years this formula has worked quite well for me. I use the floroclear for 2 basic reasons, I have many spools that have quite a bit of line remaining as I won't add line to any offshore set up, it's always a fresh spool of line, no exceptions. Secondly as leader it works well in freshwater and on some of my lighter inshore setups, but I have switched to other alternatives, mainly because I do not like co poly for a mainline. The coiling can be an issue, a fairly easy way to overcome it is to use lighter line, don't overfill the spool and soak your line in warm water, if it's already on your reel just take the spool off and soak it in the sink. I think fresh leaders and knots are best anyway, so there is no real effort involved in removing your spool for soaking. I have totally gotten away from F/C leaders, I haven't found they produced more fish even with species that are considered to be very line shy, I don't find bass to be overly line shy.

My advice, do what you know...........may be more money in contracting, probably less start up capital too. If you wife works now, you'll have 2 incomes to save for a family down the line.

The weather has been beautiful. I've been seeing a few beds lately in the canals, have done no fishing in ponds at all. It's been a little quite this past week, although I seem to manage something decent every day. Yesterday PM started slow, 1 fish about 6# for the first hour, the last 20 minutes I caught 4 or 5. I have been using nothing flukes as topwater, had I been using bottom baits I'm confident I would have greatly improved my production, I just don't enjoy that kind of fishing.

Not only did I own a scrap metal co for 35 years, I also owned a steel slitting operation, new steel sales, stamping plant, x-ray silver extraction and sales and built a storage facility. The one thing I do know about any business is not to be underfunded, not only does it take time for a business to operate in the black, but personal living expenses don't stop. Even though your wife is your main partner, it's still only one income generated from that business. Your a young man, you may want to start a family, now your wife is at home and she may have to be replaced by an employee, that may open up an entire new set of additional expenses. You start getting into rental leases, insurances and partners, get an attorney and put everything in writing. Most importantly limit your personal liability by incorporating. To succeed in any business one needs be 100% focused, personal hunting and fishing come last or not at all. I don't know anything about retail business except that I don't like them, mainly because you have to wait for the door to swing open with customers rather than being aggressive going out to find business. That said, many are quite successful at it. I would not let any new laws curtail my interest in this endeavor, you just have to adapt.

I've been back to the spot I was catching them a couple of times in the last few weeks but only caught one. Before the freeze they were all over the place here, I was catching about 1-1 bass and peacocks then in my backyard canal.

Just some thoughts as I own these rods and caught many hard fighting fish on them. Mine are spinning but I believe available in casting as well. Star stellar lite mh 10/20, max lure weight about 2 oz ( $99) with a stradic 4000, my main juvie tarpon rod. Star stellar lite hvy 12/25 lb, max lure weight about 21/2 oz( $119) with a soron 60, cobia, aj's kingfish, bonita. This last one is a sleeper, Shimano soujourn freshwater 12/25 max lure weight about 3 oz ($29), one of my cuda rods I use for casting my surgical tubes off jetties . None of these rods are what I would call light, but each with the reels I have on them balance nicely and casting is fairly effortless and not tiring. Blew my mind when I saw a couple of Long Islander striper guys down here Florida using Van Staals on that $29 soujourn.

Welcome..........say hello to my friends at the Villa del Palmar.

Mark Sosin and Guy Harvey